


The Lockbox

by quills_at_dawn



Series: Witcher Shorts [1]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Gen, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 10:05:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16910904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quills_at_dawn/pseuds/quills_at_dawn
Summary: “The Woodland Fox is dead!”Oh Roche, be careful what you wish for...





	The Lockbox

**Author's Note:**

  * For [softestpunk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/softestpunk/gifts).



> This is a gift nobody asked for but I had fun writing it :D  
> Mostly canon-compliant for The Witcher 3. 
> 
> A punnet is the little basket container thing that strawberries and such are sold in (my autocorrect didn't know so...).

“The Woodland Fox is dead!”

Vernon Roche looked up from his map of the Pontar delta to glare at the young soldier who’d just rushed into the command tent.

“His name is Iorveth and if I had an oren for every time someone claimed to have killed him I could pay the bloody bounty on that pointy-eared bastard twice over out of my own ploughing pocket and still buy Lan Exeter outright. I’m not handing over a groat until I see proof.”

“But there _is_ proof, sir! They sent this.”

Roche fought down a shiver of cold sweat then reached out for the reed-woven punnet that held a familiar, now blood-splotched red bandanna. He knew before even lifting its folds what he would find within and felt nothing at all when he saw the ear — the left one, packed in salt and slightly shrivelled but unmistakable, pointed and notched where Roche himself had once landed a lucky jab.

He placed the punnet on the table and went back to studying his map.

“Very well. Pay it.”

* * *

 

Weeks passed and Roche continued to feel nothing.

He’d packed the ear in its bandanna and its punnet away in a cedarwood arrowhead case he’d picked up off a dead elf just days before then put both it and a copy of the bounty poster annotated with the date it had been paid away in his own lockbox for safekeeping like he still had a king to be held to account by.

The war waged on, late spring gave way to summer, and his men were repeatedly ambushed by the Scoia’tael and carried out a few successful raids of their own but Roche took no satisfaction and certainly no pride in them.

And he should have. He always had before.

But he had no king to report to and now no nemesis to goad and every victory felt hollow. Every night as he sat at the foot of his camp bed to remove his tabard and his mail and his greaves and his boots until he was down to his shirt, staring at the lockbox as he fingered the heavy medallion that hung around his neck, a relic of the few things that had once given meaning and direction to his life.

At the height of summer the damp heat of the bug-infested swamp that Velen had become was unbearable even in the darkest hours of the night and as he sat at the end of his camp bed staring at the lockbox, Vernon Roche felt prickles of resentment under the beads of sweat that collected on his skin.

They were losing.

Aedirn had fallen months before and never picked itself up. Radovid had proved as bad as Emhyr and so Roche and his Blue Stripes had no sovereign to follow, little to fight for and much to fight against. They were little better than organised bandits and no better than the Scoia’tael and it gave Roche no pleasure at all that these latter too seemed to be losing the war, caught out by not having chosen a side.

The days grew shorter, Nilfgaard became firmly entrenched south of the Pontar, the front moved to Velen, and Roche’s resentment slid into anger.

His life had never been harder and he was _entitled_ to the pride and the smug self-satisfaction and all the things he used to feel the few times things went his way. It was infuriating that the death of others should turn his entire life, his whole future to ash.

The leaves started to turn and Roche crept up to Novigrad to strike an alliance with Sigismund Dijkstra and at the turn of a corner on the way to the bathhouse he stopped dead at the sight of a familiar nape and familiar pointed ears.

The terms were revolting and the taste of bile filled his mouth whenever Roche looked at the lockbox and wondered what Foltest would think if he could see him now, about to agree to collaborate with Nilfgaard to secure what little freedom he could buy for the dregs of what had once been Temeria.

The golden leaves fell and Roche wiped the blood-copper stains from his sword. Another king dead and Dijkstra too had proved untrue and nothing of what Roche had once thought the North stood for remained.

And he didn’t even care.

He sat down heavily on the end of his camp bed, planted the sword in the ground between his legs and sighed, his gaze straying once again to the lockbox.

It was all gone. Even his guilt at betraying the North was gone.

He’d had enough of death and destruction. Paying off his debt to the dead would cost what little hope he could give the living and while Roche had happily paid with his own life he would no longer pay with the lives of others.

* * *

 

Roche walked through the familiar halls of the castle in Vizima to the study the emperor of Nilfgaard occupied, carrying his lockbox, which contained several intercepted letters and documents detailing Dijkstra’s and his allies’ various doings. All part of the deal.

“Roche,” Emhyr acknowledged, glancing up as Roche marched straight to his desk and banged his lockbox down onto it.

“The papers are here,” he said, unlocking it.

“Good,” Emhyr murmured, helping himself, his gaze skimming the topmost pages, “The official documents are ready to sign but we should go over the terms.”

Roche managed the curtest nod, shrivelling inside.

He knew the terms. Self-rule, yes, but as a patina applied over an unpalatable reality. They would have to accept favourable trade terms with Nilfgaard, at some point also its currency, there would be equality among races, and a number of other things that Foltest would have chosen death over.

Fortunately, he was already dead and would never know.

“Since we will all be allies, I thought it would be constructive to have Iorveth attend these discussions.”

Roche didn’t twitch but his sight wavered and Iorveth’s face swam into it, all eye and ears and red bandanna.

“Not you.”

Emhyr eyed them a moment then stood, still holding the papers.

“I know the two of you have much history. I will give you a moment’s privacy.”

Roche barely registered Emhyr’s departure but his gaze finally focussed again, onto Iorveth’s curious look.

“You should be dead.”

“Are you really going to say that  _every_ time we meet?” Iorveth asked in annoyance, perching on Emhyr’s desk.

“No. I mean, you’re supposed to be dead. I paid the bounty…”

“Oh well, yes, then in that case clearly I must be dead. Thank you for informing me.”

“It’s not unreasonable!” Roche spluttered, “I haven’t seen you in months!”

“I was busy! There’s been a war on!” Iorveth said defensively, crossing his arms, “One that hasn’t gone too well for you either, as far as I can tell.”

Roche simply stared and Iorveth’s irritation grew and grew until it finally burst.

“Is _this_  why the bounty posters disappeared? You _really_ believed it? How you could you _believe_ it?! _You_ have tried — and failed — to kill me _for years_! You thought- What? That _someone else_ had managed it _by accident_?!”

“Anyone can have a bad day and actually, yes — how the hell could I have known they didn’t just get lucky?”

Iorveth’s only answer was a rude noise.

“Besides, they brought me proof! One of your ears!”

“Clearly they didn’t. I have both of mine with me.”

Exasperated, Roche took the cedarwood case from the open lockbox and Iorveth was soon choked with indignation.

“How could you think that’s one of mine?!”

“What do you mean?! It looks _exactly_ like yours, it has the notch and everything!”

“It has _a_ notch but the whorl is all wrong! Look at that _lobe_!”Iorveth exclaimed, incensed, then stared at him in disbelief, “It really is true that you dh’oine can’t tell one elf from the next.” 

“Oh, excuse me if I can’t place an earlobe at a hundred paces! Besides, don’t all humans look the same to you elves?”

“Well, you can believe I could recognised _you_ by your ears, let alone by your ugly mug,” Iorveth grumbled bitterly, deeply offended, “It’s like you don’t know me at all!”

“Fine!” Roche threw his hands up in exasperation, “I’m sorry!”

Silence.

“I’m sorry,” Roche repeated again in the face of Iorveth’s affronted, resentful glare.

“Only sorry that you were mistaken or that I’m not actually dead?”

Roche sighed and went to lean against the desk.

“Mostly the former. I can’t believe you’re back.”

“I was never gone,” Iorveth huffed, “It was all in your head. And that bounty was getting ludicrous, it was bound to attract forgers.”

They sat in silence a moment.

“Emhyr will be back any minute,” Iorveth murmured then held out the box, “Do you still need this?”

“No. Give it a proper burial or… whatever you do.”

Iorveth gave him a thoughtful look just as Emhyr stepped back in.

“Thank you, Roche.”

Roche caught Iorveth's unguarded look of gratitude and his heart, unbound, expanded to fill his chest, flooded with the certainty — long-forgotten now — that he had done the right thing.

**Author's Note:**

> Yup, I lied in the tags.


End file.
